One Week 100 People - Day 1

 It is that time of year for the "One Week 100 People" challenge. I usually have a hard time finding places with a lot of people so I decided to start a little early. The start date is actually today, March 11th, but this weekend several of the towns near me held their St Patrick's Day parades this weekend so as not to compete with the big one in NYC. They also try to space the parades over a few weekends here on Long Island because a lot of the firemen and police officers march with other local towns too. But I couldn't pass up finding a crowd of people.

I headed over to Westhampton for the parade. Just getting into the area to park was difficult. Most of the streets I know that lead to the center of town were closed off. Luckily a very nice young lady who was part of the Westhampton police force gave me a suggestion for where I could park. Of course Main Street was crowded with people waiting for the parade to reach our end. That gave me time to sketch some of the crowd. I used a Micron pen, a brush pen, a water brush, and a green watercolor pencil on site. Any other color was done later. I knew I had to sketch quickly because it was cold and windy. 

These people were right in front of me, but I was also able to see across to the other side of the street. I was able to use my stool to sketch this one.

This was one of my favorite characters...all decked out in his shamrock suit. lol

As always, you can hear the bagpipe players before they arrive. Even knowing they were coming didn't prepare me for sketching them since they were moving. Luckily I was at the end of the parade route and this bagpiper came back through the crowd and stopped to talk to someone nearby.

There were a lot of families viewing the parade.

It was fun sketching, but after about an hour and a half I was much too cold and had to go someplace to warm up.